In a typical single-stream recycling arrangement, consumers deposit all or some portion of their eligible recyclable items into a receptacle without performing sorting (hence the term “single-stream”). This results in paper, plastic, metal, and/or other types of recyclable materials being intermingled. At a recycling facility, the intermingled recyclable items are sorted from the single-stream into various categories, such as paper, plastic, aluminum, etc. While some of such sorting at a recycling facility can be automated, other tasks tend to remain at least partially manual, requiring some number of operators to perform. While having a large staff at a recycling facility may be cost effective for densely populated regions that have a high volume of recyclable items to sort, in smaller communities, such as rural areas, the volume of single-stream items that need to be sorted and bundled may be significantly lower.